Memphis museum manager gets What Not to Wear makeover

Emi McFarlen, 25, got a makeover, a lesson in style and a $5,000 shopping trip out of her appearance on TLC's "What Not to Wear." The show's stylists "have your best interests at heart, and they want you to feel beautiful ... ."

A Memphis museum manager with a matronly wardrobe and lackluster social life will become a reality-show Cinderella on Tuesday on TLC's "What Not to Wear."

Style gurus Clinton Kelly and Stacy London make over Emi McFarlen, 25, manager of public and special programs at the Pink Palace Museum, on the show that airs at 8 p.m.

On Valentine's Day, McFarlen thought she was attending a planetarium program with the museum staff . Suddenly, her face appeared among the constellations and she was "ambushed," following the show's format, by colleagues, friends and family as well as Kelly and London. Two weeks later, she was whisked off for a week to a boutique hotel in New York.

McFarlen, influenced by her conservative family and her grandmother, said she was dressing "like a 40-year-old spinster. I had trouble walking the line between feeling young and beautiful and being modest." She hadn't had a date in four years.

Kelly and London gave away nearly all her clothes to charity, "and that was a little hard for me," she said. She liked her cheap ballet slippers, "high-water" jeans, senior-citizen pastel tops and dresses with atrocious prints, she said.

McFarlen was educated about style and sent off with a $5,000 debit card to shop at DKNY, Loehmann's and a trendy shoe store.

"They told me I was the first person ever to follow the rules and buy what I was supposed to," she said. A hairstylist turned her copper, center-parted hairdo into a glamorous, tousled, violet-red coiffure.

McFarlen said she was treated kindly. The stylists "have your best interests at heart, and they want you to feel beautiful at the end. You can tell that."

McFarlen was in the news last year when straight-line winds sent a tree crashing into the East Memphis house where she lives and also wrecked her roommate's car.